Death Reclaiming
by ncfan
Summary: Seven times Chiyo didn't lose her mind, and three times that maybe she should have. She was never perfect, and her actions proved it. Dark fic.


Because Chiyo needs more love.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

* * *

**I:**

Chiyo's first battle came when she was eight. They were a squad of four, she, her teammates, and her sensei, patrolling the northern border as part of a routine patrol system. The night laid unusually thick and silent upon the land.

The Leaf came with the midnight moon, silent as shadows. Ten, a hundred, a thousand, Chiyo was never really very sure exactly how many of them there were. She just knows that they came, and they slaughtered them.

Blood flew thick in the dark night; the cries of the dying were more like the mad howls of wolves to the moon.

Chiyo was the only survivor; she was the only one to live to see the sun rise. When she stumbled back to the nearest base, coated in blood, eyes burned open and fingernails dripping poison, she could only faintly wonder why her comrades weren't more concerned that her sensei's dog hadn't been fed. But her sensei didn't have a dog.

The Sand found three dead Sand nin and four slaughtered Leaf nin, all killed by a puppet.

* * *

**II:**

Chiyo's dark brown eyes met those of her mother, who nodded.

_It's a rite of passage_, she had said._ No one has ever died drinking the elixir. _

Her hands shook slightly as she raised the wooden chalice to her lips. The liquid was bitter, harshly bitter, setting aflame her taste buds as it went down. Chiyo struggled not to cough or splutter as she drank. It seemed a lifetime before the cup was drained.

Almost immediately Chiyo began to feel the effects of the drink. First her fingers went numb, then her toes. Then she began to feel light-headed. She was choking, drowning in fluid, her mind screaming for release.

Chiyo felt a kunai be slapped into her hand. She was guided, steered, towards a dark dais, and led down into the center. A small child, a baby, lay screaming in the middle, howling his lungs out.

"The child was a child of nomads, abandoned for bearing a birthmark they consider to be an evil omen," a harsh, gritty voice whispered in Chiyo's ear. She was pushed down, over the infant, and her hand was guided so the kunai rested directly over the child's heart. "By the laws of the nomads our forefathers, the child is an ill omen upon the land, and you will kill it. You will kill an innocent child, who has done no ill and committed no evil, because it is ill-wished and because you have been ordered to. _This_ is your trial."

Her hand trembling, Chiyo rose her hand. And struck.

Then, she fainted.

When she awoke, it was dark, it was silent as a tomb, and she was alone. She would never know if there had ever been a child there, or if it had simply been a fever-induced vision, for there was no blood on her initiation robes and any blood on the cold stone had been mopped up.

Sitting barely three inches from her head was a purple tassel and a jar of purple war paint. A small scrap of paper read, _Lady Chiyo of the Akasuna clan, eleven-year-old genin of the Village Hidden in the Sand, you are now a full puppeteer of the Murasaki sect of the Sunagakure Puppet Corp._

_

* * *

_**III:**

Chiyo detested her husband-to-be from the moment she saw him. Her second cousin Akasuna no Atsushi was a crude, crass man who had scanned her with a mortifyingly appraising look in his eyes when they first met.

Her brother didn't like him either; Ebizo growled no lack of sharp threats to her intended throughout the length of their betrothal, threats that Atsushi (much taller and much larger than her otouto) brushed off with an arrogant laugh.

Chiyo spared no effort trying to "dispose" of her fiancé. He always sickened after eating meals with her, but never died. His body, robust and strong, never bowed to the influence of the poisons slipped in food and drink. Once, even five of the servants who had eaten from the same dish as he died, but Atsushi lived.

In her frustration, Chiyo began to believe that he was somehow blocking the effects of the poisons. But how? He wasn't a puppeteer; he didn't dose himself with poisons. It didn't make any sense.

Eventually, Chiyo came to the horrible realization that there was a very good chance that Atsushi was her punishment for past and future sins. It became clear to her the night her son was conceived, in broken sobs and rushes of blood.

* * *

**IV:**

War was hell. The heat raged all around them, the fires rose up in the form of enemy nin and licked at their heels, chasing them like the hounds of Death. They were losing, they were losing so badly…

And then, all stopped. Everything seemed silent, and Chiyo allowed herself to breathe again. It was the conflict that would later be termed the First Great Shinobi World War, but to Chiyo it was nothing more or less than hell. The only redeeming factor of this interminable fighting was the death of her "husband" (_And not soon enough_).

The shinobi of her village began to sift through the broken battlefield, its soil fertilized with blood, searching for survivors. Fellow medics flitted from body to body, looking for those who could be saved.

Chiyo followed the sound of ragged breathing behind an isolated rock, and found a young boy. He was twelve, maybe thirteen, and gasping as he bled from a myriad of wounds.

Chiyo took it all in. He was fatally wounded. He wouldn't live long enough to be transported to a hospital and any med nin trying to administer first aid would have just been wasting chakra. If he didn't die, he would be maimed for life and would no longer be able to fight. No weakness could be tolerated in the desert.

His brown eyes, so like her son Kazuo's, met hers. "Please…" he gasped, "…help…me…"

Chiyo knelt beside him. She had never been so glad for her ANBU mask in her life, hiding intentions behind white porcelain.

She drew a kunai in her hand, and cut the child's throat.

* * *

**V:**

Her eyes darkened in utter hatred as she watched the Nidaime sign the peace treaty with the Leaf.

Chiyo bit back a snarl as the smile on the face of the Hokage grew. If she had had her way, every single enemy shinobi in the tent would be lying dead on the floor, writhing and screaming for mercy.

This surrender was a betrayal of everything she had been brought up to believe. Sand shinobi did not surrender. They did not give up and they did not give in, especially not to forest-dwelling weaklings like the Leaf, who wouldn't last four hours on their own out in the desert, Chiyo's lifeblood.

For a moment, one pure, glorious moment, Chiyo allowed herself to imagine herself killing them. The guards wouldn't know what hit them; the Hokage would put up a fight, it was sure, and the fight might even be protracted and difficult, but she would kill him. And she would take every delicious drop of pleasure in leaning close over his face and watching the life fade from his face.

When Chiyo got home, she ripped every single plant in the house out of their pots by the roots.

* * *

**VI:**

_I'm sorry milady. Your son is dead._

Chiyo didn't know how many hours she had spent crumpled on the stone floor, weeping silently, her face broken. Silver hairs began to cluster in her already graying red hair, shivering softly into life.

Her son? Why was it her son? Her student, her protégée, her baby… And her sweet daughter-in-law as well; Miyu had been a gentle presence in her life for so long it seemed that Chiyo had never known a time without her.

_Hatake Sakumo, White Fang of the Leaf, as long as I live you will never sleep well again. I will avenge my son's death._

Then Chiyo struggled to rise to her feet. Sasori. Her grandson was five years old; she had to go to him.

Chiyo rose, and walked, walked to where her grandson waited, dreaming up lies as she walked.

* * *

**VII:**

Waking nightmares made up the core of Chiyo's life.

Everywhere she walked, there was death. Not in explicit terms that even the smallest and most ignorant of children would have noticed, but ingrained in sights that otherwise might be every day occurrences.

The streets on Market Day were nearly empty (_Someone's son is dying today; someone's daughter is dying to day; someone's brother, someone's sister, someone's lover, someone's friend_…), dust being more populous than people.

A man stood in a doorway, leaning heavily on a pair of crutches (_Got his leg blown off by a land mine; doesn't want to go out into battle again_).

The hospital was bustling and so crowded that people with colds and minor injuries were being turned away at the entrance. They couldn't afford to let in anyone who isn't dying or in danger of dying.

Death was everywhere. And Chiyo ran away, trying to outrun her ultimate fate.

* * *

**VIII:**

The first thing Chiyo was aware of when she finally began to come to was terrible, aching lightheadedness. She was dizzy; bile rose, hot and sweet, in her throat.

Everything seemed dark, blurry, like shadows in the night. At first, she could only see dark masses of flesh floating on the outer edges of her vision like bodies on a buoyant mass of water. Then her sight began to return to her.

A soft mauve dusk had fallen over the land. A man was lying near her, his leg twisted, clearly broken. Chiyo saw the gleam of a blade and knew it was Takeo. Up the hill there was a slight, slender figure moving like a ghost amongst the fallen. Yashamaru. Chiyo raised her right hand to her forehead, too tired to groan.

And felt her heart stop. She knew now why she was so lightheaded.

She couldn't feel fingers against her temples; instead all she felt was a warm, wet mass. She moved her arm to the level of her eyes, and forced herself to look.

Where her small, firm little hand had been, there was now a cleanly cut stump. Someone, it seemed, had gone to the trouble of cauterizing it (Chiyo could now pick up the distinct aroma of burnt flesh on her person) to keep her from bleeding to death, but blood still oozed unevenly, sluggishly, from the stump of her arm.

A few flashes started to came back to Chiyo. _Battle…border of River Country…Leaf…Tsunade…_

_That bitch Tsunade…She cut off my hand…_

_

* * *

_**IX:**

"Akasuna no Sasori is from this day forward classified as a missing nin. He is wanted on charges of desertion and suspicion of treason. He is to be captured dead or alive; alive, preferably, but if you have to kill him, do so. The squad in pursuit of the missing nin will be dispatched tomorrow at 0400…"

The world stopped and slowed, beating cold and wintry. The hot, sandy winds blowing in through pane-deprived windows did not reach Chiyo where she stood, cold and gaping open.

Her first thought: _Why? _Her second thought: _Why didn't I see it coming?_

He was gone now. Within days his body would be scattered on the dunes to be scavenged by ravenous hordes of vultures and jackals, she was sure. He baby grandson was gone, an irredeemable traitor to the village, and a wanted criminal. He wasn't her boy anymore.

In the quiet privacy of her home, where none could see or condemn her for it, Chiyo broke down and wailed louder than she had when the White Fang killed her son and daughter-in-law.

* * *

**X:**

The chamber was as hot as hell, and the noxious aroma of blood and amniotic fluid rose like toxic fumes in the stagnant air.

Chiyo's robes stank of sweat; the fluid slid down her face and hair. Karura's howls maddened the air, redoubling as she struggled to break free from the restraints at her wrists and ankles, binding her to the rough stone table. They weren't the howls of a woman in labor; they were the furious, exhausted, even terrified screams of a woman being tortured, of a woman who knew she was going to die and wanted others to know.

The baby was born in a wash of blood (there was _so much_ blood), amniotic fluid, and sand (and seemed to have been born dead, for no howls escaped his tiny lungs; Chiyo didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved), sand from which a spirit rose, a spirit with malevolent glinting black-and-gold eyes lusting for blood.

Chiyo stood stock-still, mesmerized, unable to move in terrified fascination, as the eyes of the sand being held her in its terrible power. It had a faintly humanoid shape, shifting and changing like the face of the desert. Chiyo flinched and clutched her head as demon cries screamed in the darkest recesses of her mind, as it tried to settle in her soul…

And then realized that she was not its host. It flew into the mouth of the child, and he began to scream. The baby was alive after all.

Chiyo gasped in air, realizing how long she had gone without breathing.

And suddenly it was green eyes meeting her own, not black-and-gold. "Damn you," Karura whispered hoarsely, harshly. People would later say that she had screamed.

_Yes…Yes, I am damned indeed._


End file.
